Last St. Patrick's day, I had Fab and Sylvia over to record on the good old portastudio. It was my first portastudio recording. The song was 'Polly' by Nirvana, and I had previously laid down the ukulele (yes) track, along with bass and my own vocal track. I wanted, however, to have a take with Fab on vocals. It actually never got mixed down. Anyhow, this year I had them over to do another cover of the same song on the day after St. Patrick's. I went to work a couple of days early using my limited knowledge of chord substitution.
The original progression goes Em, G, C, D in the verse. I changed this to Em add9, G6, C, D. The top note in a chord progression conveys melodic transitions. Thus, if you'll take a look at the top note in this progression(see chord chart below), you'll see it forms a primitive melody that goes F#, E, F#, E. I made a note of this, thinking a brief interlude could be added featuring this melody. I also constructed a bassline based on the chords that I immediately knew was superior to the original bassline, which was obviously slapped together in an offhand manner.
We wound up working on it for about six hours. It is now mixed and still needs to be digitised before it can appear on glissando. Hearing it will be more informative than me describing the recording process.
More dreams! Two nights ago, I dreamt endlessly, but unfortunately I can only recall the last one I had. I was at a very loud and screamy concert reminiscent of the Blood Brothers concert I attended in december. The singer was the only band member visible, and she was in the front of the crowd instead of on stage. They launched into what was obviously their big hit, featuring the singer counting the time signature. "1-2-3-4-123456-1-2-3-4-123456", screaming the 6/8 bar.
Last night I dreamt about having these massive bruises on my legs. I went to see a doctor about it. I think he seemed sort of impressed. Anyways, I wound up going into a packed auditorium for the Windsor House presentation of The Wizard of Oz. Before the show, I saw these two little kids from Windsor House dancing together. They looked amorously at each other. The play began, and it actually had nothing to do with The Wizard of Oz. There were mysterious singing voices coming from backstage and some disgruntled guy dressed as a tree or something on stage. The audience took up the singing while clapping. Some people continued to clap a bit too long, and the tree guy went, "Stop that, and let me clap to show what that sounds like" in a very pissed off voice.
Pixie has reappeared and begun a new blog which is located here. It's highly enjoyable.
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